“Changsheng... those are the Fifty Sunless right Punishment Worlds where Warden Tianfa crushed the suns several centuries ago to starve a hundred billion exiles into frost-ghouls...”
At the forward bow railing of the [Gu Family Flying Courtyard Star-Cruiser], a heavy, solemn hush fell over the family. Meanwhile, The golden porch lanterns of their ship illuminated the edge of the pitch-black abyss ahead.
In the starry void beyond Planet 55, fifty massive planetary spheres—Planets 56 through 100—hung in total, suffocating darkness like fifty frozen black pearls cast into an inkwell.
Where fifty warm yellow suns should have been shining at the centers of those fifty solar systems, there floated only fifty dead rings of shattered black stellar cinders.
Without sunlight, without spring rain, and without warmth, the surface temperatures across all fifty worlds sat permanently below minus three hundred degrees Fahrenheit. Only faint, flickering pinpricks of geothermal fire deep inside underground ice-caverns showed where one hundred billion exiled elders, mothers, fathers, and children were huddling together in the dark just to survive another hour!
On the courtyard deck behind the family, Valkyrie Squadron Leader Bing-Lan and several newly recruited sailors from the Middle Belt bowed their heads in sorrow as they looked out at the dark expanse.
